Inevitable future spectacular catastrophe in the making seen here.

There is a line in THE TOWERING INFERNO from Steve McQueen that goes "Someday we're going to kill 10,000 in one of these things." referring to sky scrapers.

I fear the same thing can be said about cruise ships. Maybe not this particular ship but someday we could loose several thousand people in one of these things. People can talk all they want about safety stabilizers etc. but man vs waves and water has been losing battle since the first cave-man found himself drowning when his primitive dugout capsized.

Unpredictable rogue or "freak"waves are a part of every ocean in the world. The SS Waratah ocean liner missing since 1909 was possible a victim of a freak wave according to one theory on its complete disappearance.

If one of these gets knocked over and I'm not talking a gradual roll over like the Costa Concordia or the Andrea Doria but a sudden swift roll we could be looking at a 9/11 scale tragedy.

You can't possible regulate for a freak occurance. Sure you design and test ships to withstand servere weather and maybe a little more. But what do you class a freak wave as occuring 1 in a million, 1 in a 100 000 ec..?

I've worked on ships that big and helped finish out one in the shipyard (admittedly, computer systems). Everything heavy is at the bottom of the ship. Engines, oil, water, it's all under the water line. The lower half of the ship is made of steel while the higher decks are aluminum. I've seen some of those ships go to 45 degrees with no problem.

Also, very few cruiseships spend time in the open ocean. Mainly Atlantic and Pacific crossings, which are minimized to as few as possible. Contrary to the popular image the cruise industry is not in the business of transoceanic travel. Ninety-five percent of the time these ships are in the relatively calmer settings of the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas providing vacations. You'll notice that even Alaskan cruises tend to stay in the inner passages as much as feasible. Cruiseships steer well around storms. Heck, once a ship I was on delayed entering Tampa bay by 6 hours due to fog.

Most of the accidents (not including the obvious individuals going overboard for various reasons) involving cruise ships come down to poor maintenance/training and ego, as demonstrated by the Cost Concordia's captain. The ships themselves are marvels of engineering and much safer than you think.

As stated by other posters, freak occurrences like rogue waves can only mitigated to a point. Look how well Japan was prepared for earthquakes/tsunami and yet they still had a major catastrophe. It's just part of living on planet Earth.

Modern cruise ships have asipods and thrusters that give them the ability to turn in place if needed. If you ever visit Miami, go to the harbor one morning (very early) and watch the cruise ships arrive. They have to stop and do a 180 before they can pull up to the dock. And forget that tugboat stuff. Tugboats haven't been used for normal operations for 20 years.

SS United States is a luxury passenger liner built in 1952 for United States Lines designed to capture the trans-Atlantic speed record.

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People want to cross the Atlantic on a cruise ship designed to make the crossing in record time? How can "cruise ship designed to capture the trans-Atlantic speed record" not make people think of Titanic?

Didn't I read, not long ago, that someone was thinking of building a new Titanic? Like going so far as building it off the original blueprints, but using updated technology, and even naming it the Titanic (or Titanic II)?

The tolerances for these modern cruise ships is very high spec. Just because it looks like a container ship with windows doesn't mean it's any less seaworthy. Moreso in fact because the rules for passenger ships is even more rigorous than for container ships. You have to ask the question though, who would want to travel in that? I know the reason they're being built is because cruise holidays are hugely profitable and the demand grows exponentially ever year, but if I was forking out for a cruise holiday I would choose something slightly more elegant to travel in.